


Scars

by rudbeckia



Series: exchange student AU [4]
Category: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Cults, Fluff, M/M, Scars
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-24
Updated: 2018-11-24
Packaged: 2019-08-28 14:59:46
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,413
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16725612
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rudbeckia/pseuds/rudbeckia
Summary: It’s ten weeks after Kylo showed up at Hux’s door. Will they make it this time?





	1. Ten weeks later

**Author's Note:**

> For the prompts _kink_ and _scars_ from rhole over on tumblr.

“Same as you. Ninety days.” Hux confirmed, looking up from the laptop balanced on the bedcover over his knees. “I did the visa waiver thing. I can have six months if I get a proper tourist visa but in either case I can’t work. And I’d have to quit my job here because they won’t let me have an extended trip abroad, so I’d be living off you once my savings run out.”  
“We’ll manage,” said Kylo, shifting onto his side and caressing Hux’s stomach under the covers. “Maybe there are other things you could do. Like... can you set up as some kind of self-employed consultant working online?”  
Hux frowned and shook his head. “I have no idea what I could do. _Consultant nuclear weapons engineer_ does not sound viable unless we live in a Cold War spy thriller and I’m the villain.”  
Kylo laughed. “You’d be perfect. Pale, British accent, all you need is a fluffy cat. Look, we’ll think of something.” He sat up, stroked Hux’s hair and sighed. “I feel like we’re planning our lives in three month blocks. Ninety days in the UK. Ninety days in the US. Ninety days in the UK.”  
“I know.” Hux closed his laptop and set it aside. He leaned against Kylo. “There has to be a way through this.”  
Kylo stayed quiet although his mind raced. Hux gave another deep sigh.  
“I want us to plan a life together,” said Hux. “Like we used to do. Thousands of miles apart, no idea about the future, thinking we could just move somewhere together and we’d be set for life.”  
“What was our plan?” asked Kylo. “I remember you were going to be an engineer and move to the US to be with me. I was going to be a famous philosopher.”  
“I didn’t become the right kind of engineer,” said Hux. “But you did become a famous philosopher.”  
“Not exactly,” said Kylo with a smile. “I became an infamous cult survivor who happens to have a masters in philosophy. My fee for speaking at conferences just about covers my therapist’s bills. I can’t get a job as a college philosophy professor because I was once charged with a serious crime.”  
Hux frowned at that admission. “But you weren’t convicted! You didn’t go to prison or anything, did you?”  
“No. But it’s on my record that I was arrested on suspicion of killing Leader Snoke and I was acquitted because of a combination of shaky evidence, a good lawyer and a sympathetic jury. College principals assume that the parents of their students won’t want an ex-cult member who might have been a murderer in contact with their kids.” Kylo sighed. “I kind of see their point. It still makes the rounds of social media occasionally.”  
“But at least you got to stay with me,” said Hux. “You have no idea how relieved I was that night when I looked out and saw you standing in the street.”  
“You thought I wouldn’t come as soon as you texted your address?” asked Kylo. Hux shrugged and Kylo wrapped him in his arms and held him tight. “I only have another two weeks. Hux?”  
“Hmm?”  
“I booked us both flights to the US. You’re coming with me, right?”  
Hux sighed and closed his eyes. “I’ll see about it tomorrow. Maybe we can work something out.”  
Kylo’s grip on Hux tightened to the point of discomfort. “Hux, don’t do this. Not again.”  
“What do you mean?” Hux wriggled a bit but Kylo didn’t release him.  
“Don’t leave me. I understood about your military career and I guess I was looking for something similar with _The Supremacy,_ but don’t choose your job over me again.”

Hux pushed away from Kylo and turned to face him. “I’m just trying to be practical, Kylo. How long could we afford to keep two places to live and buy flights every three months if we’re not earning and—”  
“My therapist!”  
“Hux shook his head at the interruption. “What?”  
“My therapist said I should write about what happened to me. About the cult. She said it would help me to move on if I wrote it all down. Get some kind of closure or see it from a distance, as if it happened to someone else or something. Only I can’t. I could write my dissertation about the foundations of ethics in government, but I can’t write about _that._ ”  
Hux’s brow furrowed deeper. Kylo laughed.  
“Do you get it? I could talk to you about what happened to me. You could write it down. When I’m talking to the next lecture hall full of psychology students, trainee therapists and general gawkers, I could be holding up a copy of our book and you—”  
“I could be there with a stack of hardbacks and a card machine. How long does it take to get a book published?”  
Kylo shrugged. Hux smiled. “I guess I have a new job.”  
“So,” Kylo said, sliding back down under the covers and putting a warm hand on Hux’s hip. “How would you like to celebrate?”

Hux laughed and lay beside Kylo. He shifted onto his back and whipped the covers away, making Kylo yelp in surprise. “I think I would like to start here,” he said, rolling onto his side and tracing a finger along the faint, silvery line of an old scar on Kylo’s abdomen.  
“Easy,” said Kylo. “I got that when I was seven. Appendix.”  
“Really? I never noticed it before. I mean when we were first together.”  
“I think your attention was focused a bit lower,” said Kylo, sniggering.  
“Probably.” Hux stroked a flat hand across Kylo’s belly, pausing to play with the fine line of hair leading down from his navel. “Okay. This one?”  
Kylo raised his head to look at the white-pink, star-shaped speckles and puckers of a more recent scar. Hux touched a fingertip to every one and kissed the biggest. “Mmm. That was nasty. It was a burn from an explosion. Small fragments of hot metal. Leader Snoke wouldn’t release me to go to hospital.”  
Hux shuddered. “That’s horrible. Kylo, you could have died!”  
“So could you.” Kylo traced the raised, white marks on Hux’s thigh with his thumb.  
“Shrapnel,” said Hux. “Missed my femoral artery. Damaged a nerve so I get pins and needles in my foot sometimes. Bad enough to get me a desk job, but not so bad I get a medical discharge.”  
“Wait,” Kylo’s brows knit. “You’re still in the Navy? I thought you worked for a recruitment agency.”  
“Yes. Both. Sort of. They transferred me to the reserves because I didn’t want to extend my twelve years to twenty but I wasn’t ready to leave either. So I could be called up if there’s a war but mainly I work in recruitment. For the past ten weeks I have been based in the local office, but I also get sent out to schools and colleges to give pep talks to teenagers, or I get to help ex-military personnel prepare for civilian life.”  
“But you don’t wear a uniform!”  
“I keep it at work. I’m not marching around London in my sailor suit, Kylo.”  
Kylo’s face slipped into an easy grin. “But you could bring your uniform home, right?”  
Hux laughed, then put on a clipped, authoritative voice. “Able Seaman Ren, your salute is sloppy. Drop and give me twenty.”  
“Oh fuck yes,” breathed Kylo. “Tomorrow?”  
Hux laughed. “I’ll see what I can do. Now, what about this one?” Hux followed the line of Kylo’s longest scar, still red in places, from his bicep, running diagonally across the front of his shoulder and up his cheek to his eyebrow.  
“I’m not ready to talk about that one yet,” Kylo said quietly.  
“Well then,” said Hux, too brightly. “I’ll get up and—“  
“Oh no you don’t,” said Kylo with a giggle. “You said I had to drop and give you twenty. You didn’t specify twenty _what.”_ He moved down the bed and dragged his soft tongue across Hux’s limp cock, grinning at Hux’s surprised _Oh!_ as his cock started to harden. Then he looked up and said, “one.”


	2. Two years after that

Applause rippled through the studio as Kylo walked across the floor. He dipped his head in a tiny genuflection, and Hux thought he could see a blush. It made him smile. The purple-haired presenter stood to welcome Kylo as lurid headlines appeared and dissolved on the huge screen behind her. She shook him by the hand, gave a ten-thousand dollar grin and gestured for him to sit. Kylo perched then remembered that he should try to look relaxed. He slid back on the sofa until his back hit the backrest, crossed his legs and folded his hands in his lap. He looked at the presenter and smiled.  
“Kylo, thank you so much for taking time out of your busy schedule to be with us tonight. Now, everybody knows you as the man who survived one of America’s most sinister cults because of your book, _Surviving The Supremacy,_ currently being turned into a blockbuster movie for release next summer.” The presenter paused to hold up a glossy hardcover copy of a book and a camera focused on it for a few seconds. “But perhaps you would like to tell us more about who you really are.”  
“Thank you, Amilyn. It really is great to have this opportunity to tell my story.” Kylo looked serious. “But before we go any further, I would like you, and everyone else, to call me by the name my parents gave me. Before I had ever heard of Ren Snoke and _The Supremacy._ Back then my given name was Ben Solo.”  
A gasp came from the audience and a camera panned and homed in on a few shocked faces. Kylo—Ben—drew his lower lip between his teeth and looked down.   
“Hi, Amilyn,” he said, looking across at the presenter and holding his hand out again. “I’m Ben Solo. It’s a real pleasure to meet you.”  
Amilyn and Ben shook hands again. Amilyn dabbed at her right eye and recovered her smile. “Ben, you say in your book that Snoke recruited you when you were a teenager. Can you tell us a little about that?”  
“Yes.” Ben blinked a few times. “He first made contact with me online when I was fourteen and I was having a difficult time with—“

“—Ugh! Turn it off, turn it off!”  
Ben plopped onto the sofa beside Hux, scrabbled for the remote and the screen went grey.   
“I was watching that!” Hux protested. “I wanted to know if you said anything that’s not in the book. In case we want to include it in the film.”  
“You can watch it when I’m out,” Ben said. “Better still, I’ll ask for a transcript to be sent to the screenwriters.”  
“Please,” said Hux. “I want them to get it right. The studio called, by the way. They want us both to go in to have a say in casting.”  
“Ha!” Ben laughed. “Are you going to demand to be portrayed by a natural ginger?”  
“Carpet has to match the drapes!”  
“And you’re going to demand proof... how?”  
“Trust me. I will just know.”  
Ben laughed. “Whatever. You know, I wish they’d ask for you in these interviews. You could march on in your uniform and everyone would see how smitten I am.”  
Hux swung himself around and landed in Ben’s lap. “How many this week?”  
“I don’t even count any more. Publisher’s handling it.”  
Hux grinned. “How. Many.”  
Ben rolled his eyes. “Like, about twenty?”   
“Twenty people think you’re going to drop everything and marry them.”  
“Yeah. Insane, isn’t it?”  
Hux kissed Ben softly and murmured, “Twenty-one.” He opened his hand and Ben stared. Lying on Hux’s pale palm was a gold band set with a ring of jet.   
His mouth didn’t seem to work. “Hux,” he managed, after a minute.  
“Ben?”  
“I don’t know what to say.”  
“Say yes, you nerf!”  
“Yes.” Ben cleared his throat. “Yes!”  
Hux slipped the ring onto the finger Ben held out. Ben laughed. “But now you need one.”  
“That’s okay,” said Hux. “We can...”  
Hux’s words trailed off as Ben bucked his hips, rummaged in his pockets and made a show of holding out his fists. Hux raised one eyebrow and tapped Ben’s left knuckles. Ben opened his hand. Hux picked up the ornate emerald ring and stared at it, open mouthed.  
“You going to put that on or gawp at it all night?” said Ben. Hux slipped the ring on and admired it on his hand.  
“What’s in your other hand?” asked Hux. Ben shrugged and opened his right hand. In small capital letters clearly written on his palm were the words, _marry me._  
Hux kissed Ben softly and Ben sat forward then stood, hands under Hux’s backside, Hux’s arms tight around his neck. As he walked carefully from the living room to the bedroom of their apartment, the TV started playing again.

_”—my family and school. When I was seventeen I fell in love, and he backed off a bit. But at nineteen I suffered my first real heartbreak and that made me vulnerable. I regret it, but I confided in him all along and when Snoke said he could help me never to fall in love again, I went to him. I was trapped from that point until my family found out where I was and came to get me free.”_   
_”That must have been so difficult. What about the person who broke your heart? Do they know? Where are they now?”_   
_”He knew nothing about what happened until we met by chance years later. I want to make it clear: it was Snoke’s fault that I shut him out of my life and blamed him for all my hurt. Even so, despite all the toxic lies that Snoke drip-fed to me, I have been head over heels in love with Armitage Hux since the day we met as exchange students in London, and nothing can ever take that away from me.”_   
_”Wait. Hux? Commander Armitage Hux?” The camera cut to a zoomed in shot of the inside back of the dust-jacket where a small photo of a man in a double breasted military jacket with three gold stripes on the cuff smiled out. “This Armitage Hux? Your writer?”_   
_”Yeah,” Ben smiled. “Isn’t he handsome? I’m a sucker for a man in uniform.”_


End file.
